Mykonos rejects fresh lockdown as Greece sees cases rise

Instead, those desperate to get back on the water will see a “gradual ramp-up of sailings”, according to Frank Del Rio, the president of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings.

This echoes the plan for Carnival Corporation, the world’s biggest cruise operator. Chief executive Arnold Donald said that “clearly cruise will not come back all at once”, confirming that they intend to resume operations with a small percentage of the fleet”. Among Carnival Corp’s brands are P&O Cruises, Cunard, Princess Cruises and Seabourn.

Chairman and CEO of Royal Caribbean Group, Richard Fain, said: “We will not rush to return to service.”

At present the Foreign Office is advising against all travel on ocean-going ships, although river cruises are exempt. In America, a non-sail order is in place for ships with a combined capacity of 250 or more passengers and crew.

See our full list of when each cruise line is due to restart sailing, and how to get a refund, here. 

Samuel, a homelessness outreach support worker who did not want to give his surname, paid over five times the price of his original plane ticket to return to the UK after it was announced that people arriving in the UK from France after 4am on Saturday will be required to self-isolate.

Samuel, 25, explained that he paid the “astronomical” price as he is unable to work from home.

“As soon as we found out, we were frantically trying to get on to the Ryanair website to get me back to the UK,” Samuel told the PA news agency.

“It was a very stressful time from last night trying to get my flight booked because I needed to be home; I can’t afford to quarantine for 14 days. There was no option.”

Samuel was named a “lockdown hero” by Stroud Town Council for his work with a homelessness charity throughout the lockdown period.

He had originally paid £110 for a return flight to Bristol Airport through Ryanair, with prices surging after the announcement.

Other airlines have seen price hikes, with British Airways selling tickets for a flight from Paris to London Heathrow on Friday night at £452. The same journey on Saturday could be made with the airline for £66.

“By the time I was able to book, it had gone up to £300,” Samuel told PA.

“I wasn’t expecting it, I knew that the Government were monitoring the situation, but I was under the understanding that they would give us a lot more notice.”

I could sing Blue Suede Shoes before I could tie my own laces; even so, when I woke to find my mother racked with grief on the morning of Aug 16 1977, I feared my father had died in the night. He had not – but the world had lost Elvis.

So it was hardly a surprise when, years later, Mum phoned my London flat from her home in Australia with a proposition.

“Sarah! I’ve got an ide-a! We’re goin-a Graceland! Fer yer birthday!” she sang down the line. Sorry – whose birthday?

To say that my mother is an Elvis fan is an epic understatement, but then, so is saying that I don’t speculatively eye up a mile when offered an inch. We were going to the States anyway, I reasoned, so we could start my “birthday present” in New York before continuing to Memphis, and then on to Vegas and San Francisco. Fair, right?

Analysis of TripAdvisor reviews from tourists visiting impoverished urban areas in South Africa suggests they regularly misrepresent townships as places of great hope, which creates a skewed understanding of poverty.

Researchers at the University of Bath analysed more than 400 reviews for the townships of Langa and Imizamo Yethu, outside Cape Town.

Tourists regularly produced optimistic descriptions, describing townships as productive, vibrant cultural spaces, rich in non-material assets, inhabited by happy and hard-working people.

Typical responses included: “We learned so much, and it was wonderful to be in the community, to experience the friendship, the solidarity, to see a new future being built”; “The level of poverty that these people live in is unbelievable. But everyone here has hope and aspirations of getting a house and work. Truly amazing people”; “There are hardworking people in the township who are making life better for themselves.”

Only four reviews remarked on water, sanitation or sewerage and two noted most residents live without toilets or running water in their homes. Overall, reviews represented residents as satisfied with their circumstances, with several reviewers even remarking the children had better lives than those from privileged backgrounds.

Lead researcher Monique Huysamen, from the University of Bath, said: “Over recent years slum tourism has thrived across the world, fuelled by growth in international travel, rapid urbanisation, and of course deepening levels of global inequality.

“This kind of tourism has come under fire for supporting the commoditisation, romanticisation and consumption of poverty, and slum tourists are often are accused of engaging in ‘poverty tourism’ or a form of ‘poverty porn’.

“While township tours, if operated by local residents, may potentially offer certain economic benefits for these communities, we found that tourists’ reviews lead to a skewed representation of poverty and its causes, certainly in South African townships.

“Issues like inadequate sanitation – a topic which has been deeply politicised in recent years – are too often glossed over, and the need for radical social and infrastructural change is invisible from their TripAdvisor reviews.

“With much international travel currently on hold due to Covid-19, now is the time to rethink and re-evaluate our own future tourism practices.”

The FCO has lifted its blanket travel ban, giving the green light for holidays to most of Europe and a few long-haul countries. But that still leaves the majority of the planet (including, as of August 16, France, Portugal and mainland Spain) off-limits. 

Travelling against official government advice is not illegal, but most tour operators will not offer trips to destinations which the FCO deems unsafe – in normal circumstances, that means places like Iraq and Afghanistan; in these strange times, it means just about everywhere – and most travel insurers won’t provide cover. 

But a handful of hardy travel firms have been sending intrepid Britons to FCO no-go zones for years. Wild Frontiers, for example, in business since 2002, has the likes of Algeria, Pakistan, Sudan and the DRC on its route map, and the company’s trips often feature regions the FCO would rather you avoided. So how does it find insurance for its clients?